This post is not from the Reed Smith or Dechert sides of the blog.

We hope we’re not the only ones distracted by the Winter Olympics. We’re breathless from Breezy Johnson taking gold in the downhill, Jordan Stoltz emerging as the U.S. speed-skating phenom, Jessie Diggins battling bruised ribs to take bronze in the 10K cross country freestyle, and Ilia Malinin throwing in a back-flip in his skating routine just for kicks—despite it not earning him any points. Not to mention short-track skating, biathlon, luge, moguls, snowboard-cross, bobsledding, the Olympic debut of ski mountaineering, and all kinds of other ski and snowboarding events where the contestants either fly down mountains at cataclysm-embracing speeds or hurl themselves into the stratosphere while contorting themselves in twists and turns that make us dizzy. Combine that competition and athleticism with the Olympic themes of unity and sportsmanship, and you can see why we’ve got Olympic fever.

We were particularly enthralled with the U.S. mixed-double’s curling team. This is from humble bloggers who, other than every four years, have no idea what curling is. But when the Winter Olympics roll around, we’re watching to see who’s dominating the house and who has the hammer. The U.S. mixed doubles team had never taken home a curling medal. This year’s team, Cory Thiesse and Korey Dropkin, absolutely dominated the round robin and earned a spot in the medal round. After a magnificent shot in the last end (like a game winning home run in the bottom of the ninth), the U.S. defeated defending gold-medalist Italy for a chance to play for the gold medal. While “Corey and Korey” ending up taking home silver, it was the first ever medal for the U.S. in mixed curling and the first ever Olympic medal in curling for an American woman. What a run.    

One of the curling commentators noted that Korey Dropkin was one of the best sweepers in the game. While it may be a stretch to connect curling to the legal side of these posts, we think it is fair to note that mass torts defendants often engage in years of clean up after securing victories in mass torts. Call it sweeping the house if you will. Case in point is the Zantac litigation. The defendants secured litigation-ending rulings excluding plaintiffs’ general causation experts in the federal MDL (which we posted about here and here).  Plaintiffs then fled to Delaware (of all places to see mass torts plaintiffs flocking, we continue to be surprised and disappointed at this trend).  The Delaware trial court refused to follow the well-reasoned decisions from the MDL and appeared to give new life to the Zantac litigation (see this post), but the Delaware Supreme Court reversed and remanded with instructions for the trial court to apply Delaware’s Rule 702 consistently with the federal rule (see here).  

While the expert saga continues to play out in Delaware, the defendants are ferociously wielding those brooms and working hard to clean up the docket.  Today’s decision, In re: Zantac (Ranitidine) Litigation, 2026 WL 244339 (Del. Super. Jan. 29, 2026), addresses the defendants’ continuing efforts on that front. The defendants moved to dismiss almost 300 cases based on the statute of limitations defense.  The defendants relied on an April, 2020 FDA notice publicly making a request for all manufacturers to voluntarily withdraw ranitidine drugs from the market. Delaware’s statute of limitations holds plaintiffs to “inquiry notice,” which is triggered “when someone from the scientific community found and revealed publicly a link between physical condition and exposure to the toxic substance.” Id. at *4 (quoting Hutchinson v. Boston Sci. Corp., 2020 WL 5752393, at *3 (D. Del. 2020)). Under Delaware’s standard, the FDA’s 2020 notice was sufficient to put plaintiffs on inquiry notice and trigger the running of the limitations period.  That should have been the end of the inquiry.   

But plaintiffs argued that longer limitations periods in the plaintiffs’ states of residence should apply instead of Delaware’s two-year period. Delaware has a borrowing statute specifically enacted to avoid forum shopping:

Where a cause of action arises outside of this State, an action cannot be brought in a court of this State to enforce such cause of action after the expiration of whichever is shorter, the time limited by the law of this State, or the time limited by the law of the state or country where the cause of action arose . . . .

Id. (emphasis added). Despite this unequivocal language, plaintiffs argued that the court should read-in an exception to the statute in the absence of any forum shopping. To support their argument that they weren’t forum shopping, plaintiffs asserted that they didn’t “choose” to file in Delaware, but that they had to do so to avoid federal jurisdiction where the MDL court’s rulings would have precluded their claims based on a lack of expert evidence.  You read that right. Sure, they weren’t forum shopping; they were just intentionally avoiding a jurisdiction where a federal judge ruled that their claims lacked scientific merit. That’s more of a contortion than Chole Kim throwing down a backside 720 followed by a switch-backside air, switch double cork 180 and an inverted 540.  

Plaintiffs relied on a commercial case where a Delaware court declined to apply the borrowing statute. In that case a foreign corporation sued ExxonMobil in Delaware, and when ExxonMobil counterclaimed, the plaintiff claimed that the counterclaims were time barred. The court held that the counterclaims were not time barred since ExxonMobil did not choose to litigate the claims in Delaware, and that if ExxonMobil had sued the entity outside the U.S. the claims would not have been barred. Saudi Basic Industries Corp. v. Mobil Yanbu Petrochemical Co., 866 A. 2d 1 (Del. 2005). Later decisions in Delaware cautioned against the approach taken in Saudi Basic, noting that “courts are permitted to ignore the plain language of a statute only when absurdity or injustice would result from a strict construction.” In re: Zantac, 2026 WL 24439 at *2 (quoting CHC Inv., LLC v. FirstSun Capital Bancorp, 2020 WL 1480857 at *5-6 (Del. Ch. Mar 23, 2020)).

In refusing to find any exception to the borrowing statute, the court relied heavily on Machala v. Boehringer Ingelheim Pharms., Inc., 2017 WL 2814728 (Del. Super., June 29, 2017). The Machala court held that application of Saudi Basic “was limited to instances where an absurd outcome or result that subverts the Borrowing Statute’s fundamental purpose would otherwise occur.” Id. at *5. Following Machala, the court held that there was no basis to apply any exception to Delaware’s borrowing statute. Despite the plaintiffs’ arguments that they were “forced” to file in Delaware, they unquestionably could have filed their cases in their home states where their alleged injuries occurred.

Stuck with Delaware’s two-year limitations period under the borrowing statute, plaintiffs then sought to avoid Delaware’s inquiry notice standard.  They argued that the court should not make a “factual determination” about whether the individual plaintiffs were on notice of the FDA’s 2020 publication. The court responded that the plaintiffs were trying to claim actual notice, when Delaware law only requires inquiry notice: 

Actual notice is simply not the law in Delaware. The Court does not need to discern at what point each Plaintiff was aware of the link between ranitidine-containing products and cancer.  It is sufficient that the link was made publicly available which triggered inquiry notice.

Id. The court granted the defendants’ motion. Kudos to the defendants and their counsel for their continued persistence in defending against these claims.  It’s like they’ve got the hammer in the last end.  We’ll of course report on future developments, but for now we’ve got another week of Winter Olympics. Probably time for some ice hockey—you never know when miracles are going to happen.